


Rocket Man

by HerbertBest



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Aliens, Alternate Universe - College/University, Cats, F/M, Humor, Ice Cream, Minor Violence, comical violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2018-10-22 23:16:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10707195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerbertBest/pseuds/HerbertBest
Summary: Holly starts regretting her choice to take part in Professor Wecht's search for extra terrestrial life.Then a very tall, very naked, very mysterious man pops up in the middle of their rented wheat field...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a result of a headcanon swap with autumn-feels, who gave me a lot of great ideas! Thank you so much!

Holly was conditioned to the sight of Professor Wecht’s agitated pacing. Normally he was icy in his calmness but even he had his limits. Especially when grant money was endangered. Especially when Holly had, once again, failed to prove his theory that extra terrestrial life existed within hailing distance of earth.

Professor Wecht was a logical man. He didn’t believe in fairy tales. Which was why Holly was bluntly truthful with him as she passed along her findings.

“Maybe we should return the equipment and use our funding on something more practical.” Not that folklore studies were particularly practical as a field, but she really wanted to make some sort of headway with her findings instead of letting everything stagnate into a giant pile of nothing.

He grumbled. “Well,” he said, “We do have these motion detection satellites for another four weeks. Maybe we should run out the lease and hope for the best.”

It was a straw-grasping moment of desperation. And Holly – who needed, nay wanted, to prove that aliens were real couldn’t resist extending her own hand in hope.

She was annoyed when she got home that day. Annoyed and tired of checking in on the light installation she and Professor Wecht had set up to attract aliens to the big, barren, empty field they’d rented for the purpose of making contact. She was starting to feel ridiculous. And exhausted as all hell. 

She heard a vague rustling sound as she turned off the flood lights ringing the large brown patch of grass they’d designated for the landing area. The tall grass ringing this whole section of the field seemed to be waving counter rhythmically to the wind, and Holly took a cautious step forward. 

“Who’s there?” she asked. “Don’t come any closer!! I have a…flashlight. A REALLY HEAVY FLASHLIGHT!” 

She had absolutely no time to prepare when suddenly a very tally, very naked man popped up right in her pathway.

“Hello,” he said, pushing back a handful of red-brown curls and smiling winningly. “I’m looking for Earth. Is this the right planet?”

Unfortunately, Holly immediately cold-cocked him with her heavy flashlight, the words sinking into her brain when it was way too late to do anything about them.

“Oh fuck,” she muttered under her breath. She took a look at the guy lying across her feet – who was leaking bright green fluid out of his nose – and made a quick decision.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holly interviews the alien, learns something of his planet's culture, and strikes a bargain with him.

He didn’t wake up until she had him at her kitchen table, a tea towel draped tastefully over his…she presumed they were his genitals, when he was in this form? 

God, she hoped so, as she guiltily pressed a tea towel to his nose and staunched the clear green fluid dripping lightly from his nose. 

She studied his features curiously as he worked. Having no idea what he looked like in his native form, Holly speculated as she studied the curves and valleys of his cheekbones, the dip of his hips, and the starkness of his ribs poking out from beneath translucently pale skin. It was an interesting form, if this was in fact not his terrestrial appearance.

When his eyes flew open she let out a surprised cry and jerked back from his face, and she got a sleepy, confused expression in return. 

“What happened? I remember yelling. Or I think it was yelling.” He sat up and cupped a hand to his nose, pinching it back into shape with a quick, crackling sound that made Holly cringe. He noticed and his brow furrowed. “So…humans can’t reset their injured proboscis manually. Good to know.” 

“They can, they just…REACT when they do.” Holly desperately tried to formulate her ideas into words as they fled about her brain, scrubbing a hand over her own face. “Who are you? Where do you come from?”

The alien sat up eagerly in his chair. “My name is Leigh. Leigh of the cluster Avidan, Dan for short, from the planet of Ka’xol. I was sent on a one year mission to your planet to study your customs and languages, in the hope of establishing a peaceful trading partnership with your people.”

Holly raised an eyebrow. “And you chose my field?”

He smiled. “You were the only one who put out a welcome mat.”

“Do you normally look like this?”

He shrugged. “Like this but handsomer.” He added, “I understand that human beings enjoy countenances such as this one, so I chose to present myself to you with this manner.”

Holly considered her reaction. Very carefully, she extended her rag and mopped up the last of his neon-colored blood. “How long have you been planning this trip?” she asked. 

Dan shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t really have time where I come from,” he said sheepishly. “But the Elders who sent me must have prepared me…not a long time ago.” 

Holly sat back in her chair, studying him. “You look so…human.”

He smiled. “My skin’s sort of…fake. I do look a little like this but I’m blue and not flesh-colored. And made out of..what do humans call it…I think it’s called energy. Similar to what you would get when rubbing two socks together.”

“You’re an alien made out of static cling,” she said.

“Precisely,” he said proudly, but she was absolutely stunned.

The solution to the bizarreness of the entire situation was easy enough to solve. “Leigh?”

“I like Dan better,” he explained. “Everyone where I come from is called Dan.”

“Okay…Dan,” she sighed. “I’ll make a deal with you. You can stay with me and study human beings If you’re willing to come with me and let me introduce you to my professor.”

He. “He isn’t a…dissectioner, is he?”

She shook her head. “He’s not a biologist.” 

Dan nodded, then smiled, quite slowly and broadly. “I’m perfectly fine with that.”

“Oh and one more thing?” 

“Yes?” 

She held up one index finger and got up from the table, leaving him with the green blood soaked towel. “Sit still. I’m going to make you some pants.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan meets Holly's cat and learns something about how human beings treat their pets.

Dan was surprisingly patient as she hovered over him, ignoring the anatomical portion of what she was doing to get the pants put together and his body covered. With her kitchen tape, she measured him, and then made notes about inches and lengths on an old grocery list. Holly then rushed into her living room, grabbed a roll of old, blue-flower spangled material she’d used to make drapes when she’d moved from the top hall shelf and hauled it into the kitchen.

Dan had been starting in confusion at the loaf of bread she’d left behind for breakfast, but as Holly took a pair of scissors to the roll of cotton, Dan gasped. “What are you doing?” he asked.

She dragged a chair to the other side of the table and sat. “Slicing up some material for your pants?” She used her measurements carefully before cutting out each shape, then basting the halves together with stitches. The form Dan had chosen was so skinny that she wouldn’t need elastic to tie it all together.

“You mean it doesn’t have feelings? Sensations?” She shook her head. “Fascinating,” he murmured. 

She nearly had the main form of the material cut out when Orph hopped down from the top of her fridge to the kitchen counter, making Dan shriek.

“What IS that?!” he asked, cowering.

“That,” Holly laughed, clicking her tongue to urge the cat closer, “is my cat. His name is Orpheus, and he’s four years old.”

Dan’s brow furrowed. “Are you going to cut him up too?”

“NO!” Holly cried, scissors falling from her grip with a clatter, pulling the cat protectively onto her knee and scratching him behind the ears to a chorus of purrs. “He’s one of my closest friends!” He was her only friend at the moment, not that Dan needed to know that.

He leaned forward onto his own open palm, his whole expression open and thoughtful. “So you domesticate small mammals and keep them in your home for the purpose of companionship, and you DON’T skin them for their fur.”

“We do,” Holly said. She placed Orph back on the table, then picked the scissors from the floor and trimmed a couple of inches off of the cuff of the pant leg.

“Your Earth is quite odd,” he said. But, tentatively, he extended his other hand, fingertips wiggling, copying Holly’s early maneuver. He allowed the cat’s sandy tongue to lap at him before gently starting to scratch along the cat’s long back. His eyes widened in shock. “This is…calming.” 

Holly smiled to herself. Good old Orph. Apparently his ability to help frazzled humans chill out wasn’t entirely kept to humankind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan meets Brian

Dan had asked no questions when Holly brought him to her professor’s office. Brian had been almost contemptuously angry on the phone when she told him their plan had born fruit; now, with. 

Brian stared into Dan’s eyes as the alien swung his feet against the examination table. “Well, I can confirm that your irises are in working order. And that they aren’t human. Excellent work, Conrad. And me. Hooray for me,” Brian said sarcastically. He carefully touched Dan’s arm – the man frowned up at him but made no gesture to stop the contact. “All of this is a cloaking device? It feels so real.”

“To hide my true form,” Dan said. “Human minds are totally unprepared to handle its awesomeness.” 

“You underestimate the power of the human mind,” Brian said arrogantly. But he watched Danny kick his feet and sighed. “Right then. I suppose we’ll give him an x-ray and then tell nobody in the world that we’ve finally made contact. At least until I can get in touch with the boys at Harvard. They’re going to be so fucking jealous. Do you have a mission, alien?”

“I’m just here to understand human life, man.”

Holly promptly blurted out the worry that had been prodding away at the back of her mind. “You’re not going to dissect him, are you?”

“I’m not about to dissect a living specimen,” Brian scoffed. “That’s for amateurs or horror movie enthusiasts. The goal is not to kill the alien but study it. Which will be your goal. Be his Mindy McConnell….god the look you just gave me. Am I that old?”

“No,” Holly said kindly, and promised herself that she’d Google the name later on.

 

***

 

In the car, Dan observed, “I think I like him – in spite of the prodding he gave me, which was quite odd - he’s not bad as humans go.”

Holly smiled as they pulled out of the college’s parking lot. “You’ve met one whole human being, Dan, how can you even judge?”

“Well, if you’re the finest human I know and he ranks slightly below that…” he trailed off, watching her pull into a new parking lot. “Why are we stopping?”

She grinned, opened her door, rushed over and helped him out. “Because it’s about time you tried some human food,” she said.

Dan’s eyes dilated slightly as he saw the big flashing neon sign before him.

“What’s iced cream?” he asked.

She grinned. “You’re going to find out,” Holly said. Then she pulled him into the restaurant before he could argue.


	5. Chapter 5

Dan eyeballed the frozen concoction as Holly placed the cup before him. “It resembles the creamy surface of our moon, Idonte,” Dan said. “But it appears to be much colder. And why does it shimmer so? Is it trying to attract me with its sheen?”

“Why don’t you dig your spoon in and find out?” Holly wondered.

Dan took the plastic object she’d handed him, ran it between his fingertips – then carefully stuck it into the creamy treat. A dollop of chocolate came up on the tip of his spoon, and he cautiously put it in his mouth.

His eyes flared. Holly prepared to be spat on or worse.

But instead, Dan swallowed down a gulp and grinned. “It’s incredible!” he began to shovel it heedlessly into his mouth, until the container is gone. “May I try another flavor?”

“You might get sick,” Holly worried.

“But I must try it! For the sake of human/alien relations, of course,” he added quickly. 

Holly sighed and went to the counter. Four hours later, Dan sat back rubbing his belly and groaning in satisfaction. 

“Are you sure you won’t be sick?” she worried.

“Oh no – my seven stomachs can handle much worse than this,” he said, sitting down in the backseat, burping to himself. 

When they were home she tried to think of some way to entertain him, but Dan curled up before the sofa and fell into an ice cream coma, rubbing Orph’s back as he pawed and meowed at Dan’s limp form. 

Holly tucked a blanket over his shoulders and let him be. Even with all of the problems he presented her, Dan had already made her life a thousand times more entertaining than it once was.

 

**** 

Much deeper into the night, Dan rolled over, and made a mental note to himself.

_Best reason not to destroy the planet – it has delicious iced cream._


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan figures out cats. Or does he?

Holly woke up to the sight of Dan crouched beside Orph. The black cat twitched its tail in an unimpressed way in Dan’s direction, while he bit his bottom lip and stared at it.

“Holly, your terran companions are…fascinating,” he declared. “Is his only purpose companionship, truly?”

“Truly.”

“He doesn’t give warmth, or provide milk?”

“No,” she said. “And no, I don’t want to skin him for food,” Holly said. She still couldn’t believe that Dan had said that. “Don’t your people do things for pleasure?”

“Oh, we are quite hedonistic,” Dan said. “We drink and make love and do as we please. Our emotions aren’t quite like yours, so attachments are harder to make. We also love science and logic and are confused by your choice. Restraint and softness – you have it in equal measure. It’s intriguing.” He gently picked up Orpheus and stared into his eyes. “And that’s clear even in your smallest animals.”

Holly nodded. “We love small creatures because we feel the need to shelter the small and vulnerable. Do you understand what that means?”

“We don’t have many small things to protect. Children are rather rare among my people.” 

She went silent. He stared at her curiously, when the silence dragged on.

“Would you like to have one someday?” she asked.

He weighed the question. “Are babies as gentle and delicate as cats?” he asked.

She laughed. “You haven’t gotten Orph mad yet,” she said. “He’s got claws.”

Dan shrugged. “Gentle creatures belong with gentle creatures.” 

She shook her head. This conversation was getting downright philosophical. “Would you like some dinner?”

“If it comes with ice cream.” 

“Strawberry.”

His eyes lit up. “I love you.”

The words were simple, but they exploded in Holly’s heart like an atom bomb.

Did he know what love was? Should she pin her hopes on him?

Or should she simply accept their differences?


	7. Chapter 7

By the end of the month, Danny’s notebook had filled with multiple notes about his life on earth. The reasons he had to save the planet were numerous. It had tall, beautiful trees to lie under. There were beautiful animals. The sun was warm and comfortable. Its ice cream was delicious.

And, most importantly of all, it had Holly. 

Holly herself seemed oblivious to his record keeping – to Dan’s relief. He didn’t want to explain the reason why he’d really been sent to her planet – a secret he clutched to his chest even as time passed along and made such keeping difficult. Holly continued to bring him to see Professor Wecht, and Dan continued to enjoy her fond company. 

The day it happened, she took him to the beach for the first time. He stood, open mouthed, at the rim of the ocean, almost horrified by its vastness. 

“How can anything be so big?” he asked her.

She smiled. “it’s actually bigger than most of the land masses we have.”

“Unfathomable,” he muttered. Watching as she stripped off the covering she’d been wearing to reveal a swimsuit, he hid his eyes and flushed. “Why are you stripping off your skin?”

Holly laughed. “It’s not skin! It’s clothing! Why did you think I asked you to put on the shorts I bought you?” 

Dan shrugged. “I thought you wanted to see how they fit.”

Holly laughed and then, in that fetching and silly way of hers, she added, “Want to come into the water?”

Dan stood at the edge of the waves and carefully, gently, tipped a toe into it. The warmth of the air contrasted beautifully with the water, which was sun-warmed but still chilly. He shivered before following her in, step by step.

She pulled him up to the surface, to allow him to float on his back. At home they didn’t have this; the sense of tranquility infusing his flesh of the peace of this floating feeling.

When they returned to the shore, Holly’s phone was beeping. He sat nearby and listened to her talk.

_”Hello…Professor Wecht? Oh, fine, just out enjoying the day.” He saw her expression change. “Oh, but…are you sure?” she eyeballed Dan with new curiosity. “I…all right. We’ll be there in an hour.”_

_“What is it?” Dan asked._

_“Professor Wecht thinks he’s made a breakthrough. And,” she said, “that he’s been getting transmissions from space. He thinks they’re from your home planet, Dan. Is that even possible?”_


	8. Chapter 8

Dan stayed quiet as they traveled back to the university. Not to say he was affectless; he seemed nervous, picking at the teeshirt she’d bought for him, staring anxiously out the window as if he were waiting for Armageddon to arrive. Holly wondered if he already knew what Brian was about to tell her – if he was prepared for the end to arrive.

Why was she thinking so glumly? There was always the chance that it was good news – that the professor had made positive contact. As they pulled into the lot she tried to stay calm, and passed by her fellow students with an arm firmly wrapped around Dan’s waist.

This was the first major physical contact they’d ever made and he felt…surprisingly squishy. Identifiably not human. Too soft to have bones underneath all of that starkness.

“You look surprised,” Dan whispered. “I informed you that I’m made mostly of fluid-filled…”

“…Don’t say that here,” she hissed. Two young, tall girls, tanned and sharp-featured, looked the two of them up and down and burst into a loud, harsh chorus of laughter. 

“Why are they looking at you like that?” Dan asked.

“They know what I’ve been doing with the professor,” she explained. “It hasn’t really made me popular.”

“Oh,” Dan said, as she steered him toward Brian’s office. “Would you like me to vaporize them?”

“Dan!” she gasped. 

“I would do it for you,” he said, as if it were the easiest, simplest notion in the world.

Holly kept her mouth shut as they entered Brian’s office, pausing only to knock. 

Brian was particularly tweedy, in a blue bow tie and a camel-colored suit and his glasses, and he eyeballed Holly with affection and Dan with concern as he shepherded them out of the lecture hall and back to the lab, then his private space.

He turned immediately toward Dan, and then he said, “I don’t suppose you could explain these sequential patters being emitted from the general quadrant from which you said your ship arrived?”

“…I know I couldn’t,” remarked Holly, as Dan took it in hand and started to read the code to himself. 

Dan kept his eyes focused on the pattern, then in a staccato voice repeated the numbers and numerals in a chant, quietly, almost to himself.

“Are you going to explain the problem to her?” Brian asked. “Or should I alert Washington.”

“Brian!” Holly said, but Dan’s whole face had tensed up.

“Tell her,” Brian said, his eyes sharp and narrowing hard upon Dan’s face. “Now.”

He cringed. “Holly,” he said softly. “I haven’t been a hundred percent honest about why I came to your world?”

A slick, sick, sliding sense of dread filled her stomach at his declaration. “Why?” she asked.

“Because if I told you I would have damaged the mission. And damaging the mission was unthinkable…”

“What was the mission?” she asked.

“And I couldn’t betray my world. I didn’t know you then, And I thought…”

“What is your real mission, Dan?”

He winced. And then, quite decisively, said, “Reconnaissance. Colonization. And termination.”


	9. Chapter 9

Holly rocked back on her heels. Staring down into Dan’s open, dark-eyed, confused features, she felt a streak of anger, followed by a streak of sad fear. This was the creature she’d trusted with her life, the lives of her animals – and all the while he’d been planning on trying to kill them.

Yet he made not motion to hurt either of them. Did nothing but sit in the chair, his head drooping down, long hair filtering from red brown to blue translucency. 

“Holly,” he said calmly, “I know you have to be thinking some pretty awful things about me right now…”

“Yeah,” she muttered.”

“I…I honestly am telling you the truth. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt Brian or anyone.” Dan said. “My people…they’re dying. That’s why I was sent here. We’re running out of water and well – you know I’m made mostly of the stuff.” 

“So are we,” Brian said. “And we don’t have enough to spare for an entire planet. Which is why you wanted to murder us.”

Dan nodded heavily. “At first you were just interesting…things to me. But you’ve become people. Friends…” he looked into Holly’s face, then away. “I don’t know what I’ll be telling them. But we can’t colonize Earth. It just isn’t healthy of interplanetary interactions.”

“Brilliant observation,” Brian declared.

“Thank you,” Dan said.

“…Unfortunately I don’t trust you. The three of us should stay together until you make contact again, Dan.”

“I understand.”

Holly couldn’t believe he was giving up that easily. 

When they were alone, she sat beside him. “I don’t want to trust you,” she admitted. “But..some part of me really does.”

Dan said quietly, “Holly…I never fit in on my planet. There’s a reason why they sent me on this mission.”

“Oh Dan.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” he curled into a ball. “The real reason they sent me here…it was a suicide mission. And I think they were hoping I would die.”


	10. Chapter 10

Holly’s bottom lip curled; she didn’t know how to address Dan’s sudden statement, whether or not to believe him. But the orphaned girl in her cried out at his words, as if they were a physical blow. 

“Why would they do that to you?” she wondered.

He took a deep breath. “I’m not popular. No one liked me. When I was a kid, I was too small, I had lenses over my optical ports. I was never picked first for blernsball games.” 

“I don’t know if this would surprise you,” said Holly, “but there are a lot of earthlings out there who know how you feel.” 

“When this mission came up,” Dan said softly, “I thought they were finally saying I belonged. I was going to save everyone. I didn’t know until my training had finished that they hoped I’d die here. So I’ve just been biding my time. Feeling less loyal to them as time has gone on.”

“So you’ve just been lying to them, the whole time?”

“They haven’t made a lot of contact,” he admitted sheepishly. “Once a month, maybe twice. They think I’m far more prepared than I am to strike. Brian caught what they’ve done so far, probably showed it to you. Sometimes they’ve asked me about progress. I sent back some water samples and they weren’t of the right quality. I knew right away, when I learned about your oceans that it would never be enough.”

“Did you use the back hose?”

“And the sink in Brian’s classroom,” he said. “I thought those would be adequate.”

She smiled. He’d saved them, saved himself, though he seemed not to know it. “I’ll try to convince Brian that he should let you go home with me. I’m afraid he might want to come with us, but I guess there are worse fates.”

He nodded. When Brian returned from his bathroom break, Holly cornered him. “He’s been giving them intentionally poor quality samples to stall for time,” she said. “Maybe they’ll lose interest in the whole planet and start looking in other places for water if we let him keep doing that.”

“Hmm. Do you really trust the alien this thoroughly, Holly?”

“I let him stay with me, try my food, be alone with my cats. That’s a badge of faith and I can’t take it back. In fact, I don’t think I want to take it back.”

Brian pulled his glasses off and polished them. “I suppose the best thing to do would be to monitor him. Sending him back to his home planet would be foolhardy. There’s nothing but an impasse before us, and the possibility of total war behind us.”

Holly had her response properly formulated, but then the lights began to flicker. It grew alarmingly dark, then a blue light flooded the room.

Dan’s face phased to blue translucency again, and his hair began to glow, shimmering shards of crystal.

But his expression was laden with panic. “No!” he whispered. “Not now!”

“What…” Holly started to ask him, but he pressed her close to his soft, skinny frame. 

“They’ll hear,” he said. “I don’t want them to hear. They can’t know.”

“Do you mean…?” she wondered.

“They’ve come back for me.” He said. “They’ve actually come back for me!”


	11. Chapter 11

Holly pushed Dan gently away. “But you said…”

“I know,” he admitted. “But…” he watched the light flash blue outside. “I guess I was wrong.” He pulled away from her. I guess I have to face the consequences…”

Her heart stuck in her throat. “Dan, you can’t…”

“I can’t let them take you!” he said. “I can’t let them hurt you, Holly!” He took her hands in his. “Please let me go. Please. I’ll be right back.”

“I’m going with you.” 

“HOLLY! You’ll…”

“I’ll be all right.” She squeezed his hand. You need back-up.

As they rushed outside, her phone rang. The message picked up as she raced out the door, her hand still tight in dan’s.

“What the fuck is going on?” Professor Wecht was yelling. “It looks like World War III out there!”

“I’ll explain later!” Holly yelled back. Then she did the previously-unthinkable and hung up on him.

There was silence outside. And then, suddenly, a sharp blue light.

The beam pulsed rapidly; Holly only understood it was how the people of his planet communicated when he began to speak to it. “Hello?” Danny shouted. “Yes, yes, I know I didn’t…there’s a reason why I couldn’t! We would never survive if we tried to…” Then his eyes turned mean. “Oh, like you’ve all ever cared about me! I know why you…Yes….Yes.”

Then, Sharply, “if that’s what you believe, then I choose here!” he snapped. “I choose this world!” 

And then he closed his eyes tightly, and Holly waited beside him, for annihilation or something much sweeter.


End file.
